Data centers are installations used to host a wide variety of computing applications and associated data, such as email, social networking, search engine, business analytics, productivity, and gaming applications. End users typically engage these applications by way of devices connected to data centers over the Internet, although other was of connecting are possible. With the increase in cloud computing, data centers have become even more prevalent as of late.
Most data centers are housed in facilities with redundant communication links, power supplies, and other infrastructure elements, that allow for nearly continuous operation. Nevertheless, sophisticated monitoring systems are often employed to monitor data center operations. In many situations, monitoring systems external to the data centers communicate with service elements installed within, such hardware or software resources, to report on the status of service elements, including when they fail. Some monitoring systems provide for the automated repair or recovery of failed service elements.
However, some failures require the attention of staff personnel to varying degrees. For example, when a repair or recovery operation is unsuccessful with respect to a failed service element, staff may be alerted to address the failure manually. When those failures occur, staff can be notified accordingly by way of emails, pages, phone calls, or the like. Large scale failures, such as a regional power outage or natural disaster, may inhibit communication between the monitoring systems and the service elements within a data center, causing associated personnel to be notified.